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Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Story Behind Storytelling

I was intrigued by storytelling this past week. The idea started when I had conversations with two people who could captivate you with their storytelling.
The first was a colleague who seemed to be able to talk about family and background as a story with rich context but soft words. Those soft words weaved stories about parents, horses, childhood experiences, and even children's teachers. I was intrigued by the impact of those soft words.
The second was a semi-retired (her words) professor who talked about life experiences in a manner that seemed so distant from the Tweet/text message driven social communication that occurs today. I could have listened for hours to stories about education and family. She used very rich words and assembled those words into very captivating stories.
Both instances represented styles that seemed so different from the sound bite bursts that deluge us every day.
As a follow-up to those conversations, I started to stumble upon blog posts and manifestos on the power of storytelling. Here are to highlights:
I came upon a ChangeThis manifesto by author Jonah Sachs who started that manifesto by proposing, “…if you want to be heard, you’d better learn to tell better stories.” In his manifesto, he provides ten storytelling strategies:

Know What a Story is

Figure Out What You Stand For

Declare Your moral

Now prove it

Stop trying to Be the Hero

Show the Broken World

Make Sure there’s action

Reveal the moral

Break the mold

Stay On ground level

You will want to spend a few minutes reviewing this manifesto to add this valuable insight to story telling.